The upcoming edition of the Musica Electronica Nova festival is entitled ‘Signs’. Because humanity has organized itself into societies, signs occupy a very important place in our lives: from prehistoric images to the banners of the Middle Ages, from signs spreading in the streets to the abundance of digital signals. What do these signs say about ourselves? What role do they play in the space of music, whose language has been based on specific signs and notations? What are the trajectories that contemporary composers indicate to us? Where do they want to lead us?

This theme will be emphasized at the opening of the festival with a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. A Space Odyssey accompanied by live music performed by the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic and the NFM Choir. In this movie, Kubrick showed the stages of the evolution of humanity. Whenever people make a breakthrough step, a black stone appears: a sign that they define new boundaries to cross themselves.

Through this inauguration, we also want to define the Musica Electronica Nova festival as an interdisciplinary festival, in which genres and aesthetics intersect. That’s why we have invited international artists, including the Yuval Pick ballet company (France), who will present one of their most important projects: Ply, new edit with the original composition of Ashley Fure, one of the most promising composers from the USA. In this project, signs come directly from the dancers’ gestures: a language that combines the pure organic quality of the human body with the meanings carried by the artists’ musical energy. During this edition, we also want to introduce a new concept, a new way of creating concert programmes which we call ‘Private Room’. Instead of compiling several artistic universes, we choose only one artist who will present himself during this special evening. To the first ‘Private Room’, we invited Alexander Schubert, a German composer who in his works creates a very personal world full of signs and combines the play of lights and video with acoustic and electronic sounds.

There will also be premieres at the festival. We have ordered new works from Polish composers, including are there hidden figures? for string quartet, electronics and video by Monika Szpyrka. This project will be presented by the Lutosławski Quartet during a concert devoted to the work of David Bird, a representative of the new generation of American composers. As part of the festival, we will also show installations: video works programmed in cooperation with the WRO International Media Art Biennale and the unique project of the Italian artist Giulio Colangelo, who discovers water as a source of music, light and gesture.

During other concerts we want to focus on pure electroacoustic music. This will be the case at the Acousma Forum, in which we will present the profiles of young composers from Italy, Mexico and Poland, and during a special session dedicated to Elżbieta Sikora, the former artistic director of the festival. The Mini Acousma Forum electroacoustic sessions have been specially designed for our young audience – they will be a great opportunity to discover new sounds and new signs with your family!

Musica Electronica Nova is not only concerts. It also includes short meetings with composers, during which there will be an opportunity to talk about their daily work, and accompanying events prepared specially for this edition of the festival.
For over a week we want to build a strong and constant dynamics around contemporary music and to share with the audience ‘new and unexpected’ signs from all the artists we invited.
Acoustic excellence and adaptability of the National Forum of Music halls, where all the events will take place, are a great chance for us to present the festival projects at an appropriate level. We want to create a special design for each event and make each concert a unique experience, a real sign of discovering art and sharing it.


Pierre Jodlowski
Artistic Director of Musica Electronica Nova